beincrypto.com
The total number of Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions has surpassed 10 million. The majority of them have been made over the past month.
According to Dune Analytics, the total number of Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions to date is 10,141,434.
Ordinal Inscription Craze Still Hot
They have generated 1,593 BTC in fees which are valued at around $44.3 million. More than 80% of the total number of them is related to the BRC-20 token standard.
There was a massive spike in ordinals activity during the second week of May. Daily inscriptions surged to a peak of 400,000 on May 7 and 8. This bought the Bitcoin network to its knees as fees skyrocketed and the mempool filled up with pending transactions.
Over the past three days, ordinal inscription activity has started to ramp up again. According to Dune, there were 262,889 inscriptions on May 29.
However, the network is still processing transactions. Block times are around ten minutes and block sizes are below 2Mb.
The vast majority, more than 91%, are text-based inscriptions, according to Dune. This is helping to keep block sizes down as they are much smaller than image or video-based inscriptions.
Some BTC core developers referred to Ordinals as network spam. Earlier this month, Luke Dashjr called for a ‘bugfix’ to filter transactions related to ordinals.
The Ordinals protocol was launched in January 2023. It rapidly became the most popular way to mint new assets or inscribe data on the Bitcoin blockchain.
On May 28, protocol creator Casey Rodarmor announced that he was stepping down. Pseudonymous programmer “@Raphjaph” will be taking over, he added.
“I haven’t been able to give ord the attention it deserves, so I am pleased to announce that @raphjaph has agreed to step up as lead maintainer!”
BRC-20 Tokens Growing
According to BRC-20.io, the total market capitalization of all BRC-20-related tokens is $433 million. Additionally, there has been $207 million in trade volume over the past 24 hours.
The ORDI token is the market leader at the moment, with a 55% share of the total capitalization for this digital asset type.
From just a handful when the BRC-20 token standard launched in early March, there are now 24,677 tokens in total.
Some of the popular ones, such as the PEPE frog-themed memecoin, have seen epic pumps and dumps in price.